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10 Pence Short said:
Running a Dell Inspiron with 1 Gig pentium and 256 MB RAM using the built in 56K modem.

It runs on Windows XP which gives you a small dialog next to the little connected icon when you connect telling you the connection speed- it ranges from 37.5 to 40kb, I'm assuming this is down load rather than upload speed!! Not sure how accurate it is.

How is the US for broadband- the UK is a goddam shambles because British Telecom have monopoly on exchange hardware and are charging the earth for third party suppliers to access their network. This is facilitating the biggest technological farce in the history of telecommunications.

If BT were a small country we would have invaded, killed it's leader and imposed our religion on it by now. Twice.

The connection icon in windows Xp is pretty accurate to the best of my knowledge(at least for me it is anyway). As far as broadband in the US.........it varies. I could not be happier with mine.But i know of some who claim they are not that impressed by it.It has to do with the amount of subscribers in a area......as they all share the same bandwidth at the same time.

the UK is a goddam shambles because British Telecom have monopoly on exchange hardware and are charging the earth for third party suppliers to access their network.

10p, I have adsl and only pay £22.50 a month..:bbg: Which is only £7.50 more than i was paying for 56k dialup..I can tell you its well worth the extra....
I get approx 50k downloads and p2p is great i get a cd worth of music in double quick time far better than 56k....

10 Pence Short said:
'fraid we're up in t'hills, our exchange hasn't been 'adsl'd' yet and we would probably be too far downstream to get it anyway.

Does anybody know anything about satallite based access yet?

From what i understand the download speed of a satallite connection rivals the speed of a cable modem. But their seems to be some draw backs. The starting monthly fee is higher and your usage is a set amount of time.If you want or need more time the price goes up

Re: Re: Re: Just Wondering............?

Sean said:
is it a set fee for a certain speed? Or does the provider charge you more for a faster bandwidth if you choose to do so?

The standard speed in the Uk is 512 down and 256 up on a contention ratio of 50 - 1, which is approx £25.00 a month (Depends on isp) For 512 i pay £22.50 if i wanted a contention ratio of 20 - 1 then it would be £60.00... If i wanted 1024 down its £95.00 and for 2048 its a massive £140.00 a month all are with upload speed of 256.
There are cable providers but i don't know there costs but the fastest speed wise is 1 meg..

JohnR,
Thanks for the info. Seems that it is done the same way on this side of the pond as well.At least you can select the speed that you want to connect at.I have a cable modem.......and although that's nothing to shake a stick at....everyone shares the same bandwith.....which can really get bogged down during peak usage.As of yet ADSL in not in my area.

I finally took the plunge

Just purchased a Dell Dimension 4400. It has a 1.7 GHZ processor Pentium 4 and 256 M Ram. Connected to Cable it flies. Great machine! First venture into XP. Seems like they are trying to take away our freedom of manipulation.

After some pretty frustrating problems initially, I've managed to get XP Pro running like a gem, for the timebeing.

At least when an app. locks up in XP it lets you sort the program out without resorting to the old shut down > scandisk > 30 more seconds > bored stiff > throw PC out of window > personal injury case against person hit by computer flying out of window > bankruptcy.

Sean

I ordered a SB4100 broadband modem (which is like the one road runner furnished) and it will not connect. All the lights are on and it acts like it is hooked up but there is no connection. I called Road Runner tech support and they said that only the equipment they provide was recognizable by their system. Any thoughts? I was going to use it on my old system downstairs I put in the spare bedroom.

Re: Sean

MVEYES said:
I ordered a SB4100 broadband modem (which is like the one road runner furnished) and it will not connect. All the lights are on and it acts like it is hooked up but there is no connection. I called Road Runner tech support and they said that only the equipment they provide was recognizable by their system. Any thoughts? I was going to use it on my old system downstairs I put in the spare bedroom.

:cheers: "Mario Andretti" Jerry

Hmmmm....sounds like who ever you were talking to was thumbing through the "Help Me Figure This Out" manual during the conversation.More than likely their service is looking for the correct IP and/or Adapter address to identify the modem and that new "PodRacer" you have :D This is pretty much a standard practice among broadband company's.It helps eliminate subscribers who try to hook up multiple pc's to their one connection.SOooooooo to the best of my knowledge the only way to get around this is to purchase a Cable/DSL Router.You will still use the original modem that came with the service....only you will plug the modem into the router........and then plug the router to your pc.Most routers have a program that will allow you to "clone"(no pun intended)your IP/Adapter address.Sometimes this can also be referred to as a MAC address as well.Also routers will come with a different number of ports.......2,4,6,8 etc.Use this to determine how many pc's you want to connect. Now the bad news....Not a single one of the broadband companies support or encourage this at all.So you will get no help from them what's so ever.In fact your best off not to call them(that will only tip them off as to what you are trying to do):finger:Hope this helped somewhat or at least pointed you in the right direction.:cheers:

Thanks Sean and John

That info will help. The funny thing is that the service techs from Time Warner that installed the initial cable and modem hook up told me I could put as many computers on the system that I wanted. I was only limited to one e-mail address. If I wanted more e-mail addresses it would cost me more. Didn't know I was taking advantage of Time Warner.